Sunlit Between These Trees
by floweranza
Summary: After everything ends, Naruto travels. The ocean seems like a good idea.


After everything ends, Naruto travels.

The ocean seems like a good idea, so at first he heads south. The air becomes warmer. Naruto takes his time, lingering in places where the trees are tall and the shadows dapple over his skin in the sunlight.

Everything seems more muted in the night, the sounds of the forest broken only by the crackling of Naruto's small fire as he pokes more sticks into it with the hilt of a kunai. A yellow spark flies up from the flames and then dissipates, and Naruto realizes he hasn't spoken for a month now, not since he left Konoha.

He leans back on his hands, the gritty earth of the forest floor abrasive against his skin. The summoning scroll is solid where it is resting on his lower back. Its weight is heavy and Naruto ignores it.

Naruto wonders if Jiraiya had traveled through here. Probably, Naruto muses, the possibility is very high. Jiraiya had traveled any route that would've taken him towards good looking women and the women in the south of Fire Country are said to be astonishingly beautiful.

_That old lecher_, Naruto thinks.

The stars are bright. He stares straight up at them and the thought comes to him, almost as inanely as anything else, that his father and his mother and Jiraiya would have all seen the same thing as he's seeing right now. His father would have made some mistake in _taijutsu_ even though he was a genius, and Jiraiya would've reached out and laid a hand between his shoulder-blades. Pushed forward until he had it right.

When the fire burns out, Naruto sleeps.

**···················**

Naruto lies on the grass and looks at the blue sky with his eyes wide and his hands in loose fists at his sides. The sky is light in this place, even in the dark of night.

_Hey..._

He feels warm. Everything is raw in the sense that it seems new, cut open and then scabbed over. There's something he can hear; when he focuses on it, it's the sound of Sakura humming as she bustles through a room, bandages cradled in white loops within her arms.

Sasuke leans over him and smiles. It's that small smile that was always a present, an acknowledgement, a long-gone memory. "Didn't know you had it in you."

_Did you ever know?_

"Hurry up, moron."

_Can't you wait for once? Bastard._

The stars are overly bright, Naruto thinks. They're making his vision blur. Sasuke's visage swims in front of his eyes, disappears, and Naruto thinks it'd be okay to die like this, with every beat of his heart spilling blood on the grass.

Kyuubi is raging, his vicious chakra sealed away, but Naruto is calm. He closes his eyes.

**···················**

When he wakes, he doesn't spend much time thinking about this dream. Shikamaru had once told him that dreams were the body's way of tending to the subconscious, as it was too troublesome for the person themselves to do so when awake. Naruto disagrees on the basis that if his dreams are a reflection of his subconsciousness then he must be an incredibly stupid person, more so than most people think.

For one thing, Naruto is not calm. There are so many questions in him that he will never get answers to. He can sit still all he wants, but Naruto is seventeen and possessing a volatile personality and yet he hasn't spoken in a month.

There is something wrong with that.

So he keeps traveling, and in another week he has arrived at the ocean. The air here is salty and colder with the waning of summer. The mid-noon sun glitters in a yellow streak across the ebb of the waves.

_Waves and wind_, Naruto thinks, and is startled at the tears pooling by the corner of his nose.

He thinks of his father barely older than twenty-two, twenty-three, cradling a baby to his chest as he stares down death. Putting his hands to Kushina's stomach - after all, that seems like a fatherly thing to do. Sitting behind the Hokage's desk and reading Jiraiya's stupid story, admiring the main character so much that he suddenly decides on a name for his unborn son-

The rage comes, not unexpectedly. Naruto spins a Rasenshuriken into his hands and screams. "Fuck you," he yells between the sobs, his voice rasping from disuse, "you couldn't even complete this dumb technique! Fuck you! Fuck you!"

When he hurls it into the waves the ocean seems to explode in front of him into rushing water and white foam. It crashes down on top of him and throws his hair into his eyes. As the wake finally recedes, water dripping from his fingertips and nose, Naruto feels better. He breathes hard. _I'm sorry_, he thinks. Then he realizes that he can speak again. "I'm sorry," he repeats and he's speaking to them both, to Minato and Kushina as they'd lived.

"You knew what was going to happen - the seal weakening, at least. But you had me anyway. You wanted me so much."

If he had known this as a child Naruto would've clung to it, never letting go. At seventeen he clings to it just as tight, white-knuckled, desperate.

**···················**

Naruto keeps walking along the coastline, avoiding any harbor villages along the way. He dreams every night but feels rested in the mornings as he carefully cleans the area where he'd slept.

He can speak now, but he doesn't really want to be like the Gaara of old who used to mutter to himself and his creepy Sand under his breath. It takes Naruto a while to figure out that he's feeling lonely. That amuses him because it used to be the feeling he was most familiar with for the first twelve years of his life, but he'd only wanted to get away so bad - from everything, from everyone - he guesses he had forgotten how it felt, for a while.

When he stops it's in a little glen painted with sunshine. The breeze passes through freely, uninterrupted by the absence of trees. There's a little creek burbling through the side of it and Naruto tosses his pack aside. He bites his thumb and then sits for two minutes watching the blood slide down the skin, feeling guilty.

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu," he finally mutters, somewhat petulantly, and slams his palm down on the earth.

Fukasaku appears in a little explosion of smoke. He looks almost surprised as the careful little rings he's shaping with his mouth are blown apart by the wind, but he looks far less surprised as his gaze finally lands on Naruto.

"Ahh," he murmurs. "Young Master. I'd wondered when you'd call on me again."

Naruto stares at him. "Not Naruto-_chan_?"

"We've gone beyond that, I believe," Fukasaku says slowly and bows deep, his skinny little toad legs bending out impossibly far. Then the moment passes, Fukasaku straightens up and lays aside his pipe after one last draw. "You look like hell, kid."

"Thanks," Naruto replies wryly.

They sit quietly together. But even the possibility of having a conversation makes Naruto feels better, like perhaps he's rejoined the living world.

"Jiraiya-chan used to take trips like this when he wanted to seek answers."

Naruto startles, turning. "What?"

"You two were very similar," Fukasaku says, with all of his usual bluntness. "And he was proud of you from the beginning. He woulda been proud of your actions later on too, had he lived. I truly believe Jiraiya was happy to have met you the way he did, and that he regretted he'd missed the chance to say it."

It seems insane that Naruto should have any tears left after his crazy crying jag three days ago, but they rise behind his eyes and burn. He doesn't cry, though. Instead he clears his throat roughly and swipes the back of his hand over his eyes.

He lays down on the soft forest moss. "I don't think I knew anything from the beginning," he admits.

The toad looks at him assessingly. "You still did well, kid."

"Even if I failed?"

"You're alive," Fukasaku says, and that's really the crux of the matter. "Shall I cut your hair?"

"Yeah, um, please."

Naruto hands over a kunai and tilts his head. Locks of dirty blonde hair fall to the ground before his eyes and the weight he's been feeling leaves the back of his neck. After Fukasaku is done, Naruto unties his forehead protector from around his forearm and puts it around his head again. He touches the familiar steel weight with his fingertips.

"Thanks," he says, feeling out the embossed symbol of the Leaf. "What should I do now?"

It's not really a question that expects an answer. The village doesn't need him right now, if no one's been sent after him. He's not exactly hiding. Tsunade-baachan must be giving him time - but now that the numbness is gone, the allure of traveling around in solitude is quickly losing any appeal for Naruto. _So... what should I do?_

When he looks up Fukasaku is gone. Naruto steps on the pieces of his shorn hair as he stands up.

He needs a bath.

**···················**

The little traveler's village is quiet when he steps into it late in the night. It's right off a well-known path that traverses Fire Country east to west, and is close to the border to River Country. It's harvest season, and Naruto isn't surprised that the villagers must be going to bed with the setting of the sun and then rising with the dawn.

He walks the quiet main street. It's lit in patches by electrical lamps hung high above. Every little farmer's stall is empty but left largely alone. This must be a safe village, and Naruto marvels at how things must be changing.

There's only one inn with its windows shining in the dark, and he heads there.

The teenage girl behind the counter is picking at her nails and poking sleepily at the ledger in front of her. She's a civilian, and so there's a delay before she shrieks upon recognizing who he is. The ledger flies straight at Naruto's face with the force of her surprise, and he snatches it out of the air carelessly.

"Oops. Uh, good evening," Naruto starts out, rubbing the back of his head. "Um... sorry I smell."

"U-Uzumaki-sama, it's such an honor-" the girl manages to stammers out.

Naruto has wanted his whole life to be infamous, and now that it's happened he's completely bemused by it.

He nods slowly. "Er, yeah. Could I have a room for the night? I'd like to use the hot springs too. Here you go, sorry." He slides the ledger back towards her.

She stares at him for another minute, eyes jumping from the Konoha symbol on his headband to the whiskers on his cheeks to his dusty traveling cloak before she collects herself. "Yes, of course. Please, sign here... would you like us to wash your clothes?"

"I'll bring them by later."

After so long trudging through the forest, the feel of the steaming water is amazing. Naruto looks somewhat guiltily at the remnants of grime that float out from his hair, and he ducks beneath the surface and scrubs much more carefully. When he emerges through the surface with a gasp, the world seems like a much better place.

The rocks are cold beneath the small of his back as he leans on them, hooking his arms behind him, and he shivers.

_What should I do now?_ Naruto wonders again.

There are two things in the world Naruto is good at. One of them is being a ninja, and the other is appreciating excellent ramen. Naruto blows bubbles into the water and thinks.

**···················**

It's not as though he has to think too hard about it. He gives himself brown hair and brown eyes, smoothes away the whiskers on his face and rents out an apartment near the main throughway; it's a smaller room than his apartment in Konoha, which had been cozy enough to leak right into his face when it rained. Naruto doesn't even discover the name of this village until two days in, when he's haggling for some apples and the guy gives him a one-eyed glare and begins ranting about the spirit of Zurumi Village and the inherent honesty of its citizens.

Naruto doesn't believe it for one second, given that the man is trying to pick his pockets at the same time. Plus, he's a ninja and he's always known that there is absolutely no such thing as inherent honesty between two people who aren't friends.

He does his best to avoid the girl from the inn, and opens up his ramen stall a week after moving in.

It's slow at first. He leans back behind the counter, idly twirling a kunai around one knuckle. His mind wanders freely from the Kyuubi, locked inside him, to Jiraiya, whom he will never forget. Sometimes he thinks about Sakura and Kakashi - although in that he's lying to himself, because he thinks about Sakura a lot. Naruto thinks about his parents. Then there are some things and people he never lets himself think about, because when he does he ends up clenching his fingers tight around the kunai and cutting himself.

Word gets out soon enough that his ramen is good, and the ensuing rush manages to get his mind off of things. Naruto knows his ramen - he's breathed it in for probably the last thirteen years of his life, all the different flavors and aromas of it. He develops a funny little image in his mind of himself as an Ichiraku-like figure: middle-aged and possessing a bald pate with only two blonde hairs left under a small hat, beer-bellied and serving ramen to teenagers with wild ambitions day after day.

Naruto knows that will never be him, but he finds it funny anyway.

When the harvest season ends there is a festival. The streets become decorated in gay red colors and the traditional drums of Fire Country make his little stall vibrate with the music he's grown up with. A procession for the coming new year jingles its way down the street and Naruto pins his wish to it as it passes by: _May there be peace between People_.

The cool wind of winter begins to blow, and with it he starts to like Zurumi Village.

**···················**

He's walking back to his apartment from the stall when he notices a crumpled little figure on the ground. The boy is scuffed up and his clothes are in rags; from the thinness of his lips he doesn't have much time left, and the recent cold snap can't be helping. It has led people to stay inside, which is a death sentence to any urchin pickpocket.

Naruto looks down dispassionately at the child and turns away. Maybe a minute and a half later, he's turned on his heel and is back.

"Damn," Naruto sighs, rubbing the back of his head. "I don't want to end up like another Zabuza or Ero-sennin with picking up stray kids. Not a great track record."

Naruto crouches down and squints at the boy's face. All he sees is a mass of dirty black hair and premature lines on a young face. The dark shade of the hair reminds him of something.

"Shit," he says, more quietly.

Then he heaves a deep breath, sticks the kid under an armpit and heads towards his apartment where it's warm.

He nurses the kid throughout the night, spooning warm ramen broth into his mouth and bandaging up the scrapes on his limbs. Halfway through the crowning of dawn he uses a jutsu to warm up the water in the basin by the bed, and when he looks over the child's glazed eyes are halfway open and reflecting the sunlight coming in through the window.

"Ninja," the kid says slowly, amazed. "You're a..."

"Don't know what you're talking about," Naruto replies, and stuffs more ramen into him. Can't hurt anybody.

**···················**

"Aren't you a _ninja_?" the boy asks obstinately the next morning, pillowing his chin on his thin crossed arms.

"Sure," Naruto answers absently. It's the fifth time the kid's asked, and Naruto doesn't see any more sense in lying about it. He squints at the strainer. Making delicious ramen has proven just as delicate as any difficult jutsu.

"So why're you running a ramen stall?"

Naruto pinches a bit of spice between his fingers. "I'm all ninja'd out, kid."

"You're not even that much older than me! Liar!"

"Uh, for one thing," Naruto retorts, "how d'you know I'm not changing my appearance with a ninja illusion or something?"

"You're too stupid to be old," the kid says flatly. "I can tell already."

He's about to turn and bop the boy one on the head when he realizes what he's just heard. It's been a long time since anyone's called Naruto stupid or incompetent or any of the pet names he'd been teased with before everything got grim. A warm little flame of pleasure bursts in his chest.

"Hey, what's your name, kid?"

The child looks startled from Naruto's quick turn-about. "K-Kenji."

"No last name?"

"No."

"Age?"

A vein begins to twitch in the boy's forehead. "Ten," he says, petulantly. "I think."

"Good enough for me," Naruto says, banging down the bag of flour on to the counter with a large thud. "Call me Jinto. I don't care if you're a runaway or an orphan or whatever, but I've got a deal for you. I need an assistant here, and if you do what I need you to do I'll pay you for the work. How about that?"

"But you're a _ninja_," the boy replies. He seems to be stuck on this point.

"Everyone has their hobbies, and that includes selling stuff on the street. Look, kid, are you going to take me up on that offer or are you gonna leave? It's cold out there."

**···················**

Naruto likes Kenji more than he'd expected. The kid kind of reminds him of Konohamaru in a spunky, determined way. Winter passes quickly with the two of them manning the ramen stall and Kenji sleeping in a pile of blankets in the corner of Naruto's messy apartment. It's nice to have someone to speak with, even if the other person is approximately ten years old and holds absolutely no respect for ramen.

The sole problem is that Kenji's dream is to become a ninja. Naruto has no intention of becoming anyone's teacher, especially when he can see all the parallels.

For his part, Kenji attempts to wake up Naruto with cold water every morning, sometimes throwing in the old bucket-on-the-door trick for variety. More than ever Naruto can now appreciate why people used to find him so annoying and loud as a child, with all the pranks and brazen words that had entailed.

Kenji is a sickly child, though. He remains skinny and emaciated and he catches a bad cold in the middle of March. It's at times like these that Naruto wishes that Sakura was somewhere near, because he's seventeen and has a sick child crying in his lap with no idea of what to do.

"A-Are they gonna come and kill you?" Kenji wails in the middle of the night, his fever spiking.

"What are you talking about?"

Naruto tries to not sound as worried as he is, wringing a cloth in cold water. The kid is off in a bad way.

"If ninjas run away from their village then, then, they send people to catch them and chop them up into little bits! They're going to do that to you, aren't they, because you ran away?"

"Kid, that won't happen for sure-"

"Don't leave me, Jinto!" Kenji sobs, and his little hand wraps around Naruto's fingers with a crushing force.

Naruto stares down at it.

"I promise," he hears someone say. Then he realizes it was himself.

Kenji's sniffles melt away into the sounds of the village waking up. Naruto falls backwards and stares at the ceiling, thinking of how things go in circles and never-ending spirals. The Sandaime training the Great Three, then Jiraiya teaching Naruto's father, then Naruto's father teaching Kakashi - even then it breaks down into parallels of loss. Naruto does not want to teach anyone.

The fever breaks two hours later.

"Why won't you teach me?" Kenji asks dully, finally letting go of Naruto's hand.

"I'm not suited for it, trust me."

Kenji rolls over in his sweat-soaked bundle of blankets and glares with his dark eyes. "Bullshit."

"Fine. Let's make another deal," Naruto says. "If you manage to make me laugh I'll teach you how to be a ninja, okay?"

The kid's face falls. "That's not fair."

"Why the hell not?"

"I've never even seen you _smile_."

**···················**

Naruto stares at himself in the mirror in the bathroom and pokes at his cheeks. He tries to grin, but even with the henge dispelled he can see no trace of a smile on his face.

"Great," he says to his own reflection. "Now I'm a weirdo like Sai."

For the first time in a long time, he thinks of Sai. He hopes the guy is doing well, because Sai is hopelessly honest and people take advantage of honesty. Sakura must be protecting Sai from himself, though, if Naruto can bet it on anything.

Kenji wallops on the door, then kicks it. "Hurry up already!"

Naruto tries to smile at himself, but the stubborn reflection doesn't change.

**···················**

Every two weeks after green buds begin blooming on the trees an elderly woman appears from the entrance to the village and makes her way to Naruto and Kenji's ramen stall. She holds herself with the grace of a former shinobi and Naruto thinks there's something steadying about her small, wrinkled hands. The woman needs no help, but Naruto always gets up from behind the counter and circles around to escort her to a seat.

She's endlessly charmed by Kenji and spoils him endlessly with treats and stories about Konoha. Naruto scowls at her and says, "Hey, 'baachan, you're going to make his head explode with all these stories."

"What of it?" she replies and laughs creakily. She reminds him greatly of Chiyo.

"Yeah, what of it?" Kenji repeats, kicking Naruto in the shins. "At least someone is talking to me about something!"

"Ha," Naruto says. He rolls his eyes and turns to organize his collection of spices. He tunes out the sound of Kenji attending to the small amount of customers here so early in the morning, his excited chatter now so familiar that Naruto doesn't pay much mind to it.

"Hey, hey, Jinto, who're those kids?"

Kenji is pointing at the photograph of Team 7 that Naruto has only recently put up in a little out-of-the-way corner. At the counter the old woman sets down her bowl with a soft click and looks at him, her green eyes gazing keenly.

"They're ninja, right? Were they your friends?"

Naruto lets himself look at the grumpy look on his face and Sasuke's, Kakashi's smiling eye, and Sakura's rapturous expression. "I knew them. The black-haired guy was an annoying bastard and the blonde was a troublemaker, but the girl was a good girl."

"Was?" Kenji asks, bouncing in place. "What, you're not friends anymore or something?"

"They're dead," Naruto tells him.

Kenji's smile falls. "But-"

"It's a good story, though."

"How can it be if they're _dead_?"

"For ninja," the old woman says quietly, "some of the best tales about heroes are about those who've died."

"Yeah," Naruto agrees. "So listen up, Kenji. They were a team for a while, but one of them betrayed their village. The other two believed in him so stupidly that they went after him and tried to get him to come back, but he wouldn't do it. In the end, uh... I guess they decided that they couldn't live like that, and all three of them died in a final battle."

The kid stares at him. "That story sucks."

"Great bedtime story for kids," Naruto corrects him, and ignores the way his hand shakes as he pats the photo above Sasuke's face.

**···················**

That night Naruto stares at the ceiling, counting the threads in the spiderweb that hangs above his face. Enough time has passed now for him to understand that Sasuke had already been fucked up by everything, had been set on a certain path by circumstances that had warped his young mind so easily in its weakest moment. It had been a damn shame.

Naruto can't hold himself responsible for Sasuke. He can't even hold himself responsible for not dying with Sasuke like he'd wanted to in that one last fight where he'd imagined they'd both go out with explosions like the fleeting life of shooting stars because Sasuke had saved him, in the end. He'd been as much of an asshole right before death as he'd been in life, speared by Madara's final strike in front of Naruto's eyes.

"Thanks... moron," Sasuke had said, bleeding from his mouth. "Sorry."

"Fuck you," Naruto had replied, and those had been the last words he'd exchanged with Uchiha Sasuke. That was okay, because they had always spoken to each other more with actions. Maybe it had been the best possible parting for two best friends.

Naruto stuffs his fist into his mouth so he doesn't wake Kenji and curls into a ball, shaking with muffled tears. They burn his eyes but his heart feels lighter.

**···················**

"I'll train you," Naruto declares to Kenji in the morning. "Be prepared to hate me, kid."

Kenji stares at him with his mouth wide open. The bucket he'd been filling with water from the tap is overflowing and flooding the floor of their ramen stall. Naruto nudges it aside while Kenji is still flapping his gums. "R-really? But I haven't made you laugh yet!"

"Trust me," Naruto says and ruffles the kid's hair. Something in Naruto's expression must be different, because Kenji falls silent. "I'll make you the best ninja you can be."

"By the way," he adds offhandedly, "I've been using a ninja illusion since the beginning. From now on, start looking underneath the underneath or people will think you're an idiot."

He laughs when Kenji splutters.

**···················**

As summer comes to Zurumi Village a haze falls on the main street and Naruto begins to pack up his ramen stall. The locals are sorry to see him and Kenji go, and they cluster to give them parting gifts. When the crowd asks where they're planning to go Naruto points north.

He will miss it here, a little. There are no questions of life or death in this place, only arguments about untrustworthy deals and when a lazy son might finally marry that girl from up the street. The only thing Naruto has to worry about is feeding ramen to hungry travelers.

Still, it's time to move on. Naruto has taken to looking through the forest in the direction of Konoha and dreaming of jumping through the trees, the wind rustling through his hair.

The old woman who had so frequently come to his stall draws him aside in the evening, and Naruto follows her to a little open space in the nearby forest. They silently stand apart and drop their henge in unison.

Sakura and Naruto look at each other.

"Hello," she says, a bit breathlessly.

"Yo," he says.

A split second later they're embracing, Sakura's slender shoulders pointy against Naruto's chest. Naruto closes his eyes and breathes her in, the familiar smell of antiseptic and the light perfume she uses on her hair when she's not on missions.

When they part Naruto notices that he's grown even taller. Either that or she's shrunk.

He coughs and looks away. "No one's killed Sai for being annoying yet? Or Kakashi-sensei? Someone's bound to have done them in by now."

"There's been some near misses," she smiles. Sakura looks as though she's on the verge of tears. "I was sent to find you, but when I did... I wanted to give you more time. You looked happier here."

"You make a mean-looking old lady," Naruto says honestly, and then recoils as she raises her fist. "Thank you, Sakura-chan," he adds softly.

She clears her throat. "Master wants to start training you for the position of Hokage-"

"What about the old farts on the council?"

"They agree with her," Sakura says. Her tone implies that Tsunade incurred agreement with the placement of a few judicial fists and a large sake bottle. Even after everything, not everyone is prepared to place complete faith in a jinchuuriki.

"That's crazy," Naruto says. "They're crazy. What the hell are they thinking?"

"Yes," she replies, and a tear finally falls down her pale cheek. She reaches out and takes his hand into hers. "Congratulations, Naruto."

Naruto lets his head fall back and he takes a deep breath. In his head Sasuke's voice says, _I always knew you had it in you._

_Yeah_, he answers. _Just watch me._

"Lemme go fetch the kid," Naruto tells her. "And then we'll head home."

**···················**

After everything ends, Naruto smiles.


End file.
